Setting up Hierarchies and dimensions

Question

Do you have any idea what i need to do if the commissions depend on discounts, item numbers and customer numbers?
We are on 3i- 3.1.2 and pay commission after invoicing and have used indirect mapping from AR. How to bring in discount related info.
How many hierarchies will I need to setup. Will I need one hierarchy for items, customers and rules apart from the sales and revenue class hierarchies. Also what should revenue classes and how should the rev class hierarchy look like if we have several thousand items and customers.
Will I need to create each combination of item and customer as a revenue class and assign all of them to each compensation plan.
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Answer 1

You will need a hierarchy of values for each dimension of classification that you need to determine the basis of classification. Your objective is to create the FEWEST rules that accomplish this objective. For example,
A company sells 5000 products through two distribution channels. On the face of it, this would imply 10,000 rules and revenue classes. However, when we looked closer, it was the method of distribution that really determined how much they they paid. The product id was important to capture for auditing and reporting but was not actually needed for classification. Therefore, the only classifcation categories required were the two that distinguished the different distribution channels (which presumably paid different rates)
Be sure to distinguish between the concept of classification to determine the basis of calculation and the linkages between salesreps and customer accounts. For example,
does every customer have seperately negotiated rates for every product?
The revenue class hierarchy will ultimately reflect the groupings of rules that you need for classification. The revenue classes are simply bundles of rule combinations...but you should only create the combinations that you definitely need. Think twice before blindly creating revenue classes for every combination.
The sales hierarchy is completely different since that simply indicates the chain of credit receivers who potentially receive credit. The presence of a specific revenue class in their plan is the second determinant.
I believe in 3i there is a plan element function which covers discounts. Not needed for classification.
The customer dimension is not needed for classification unless individual accounts have seperately negotiated commission rates in addition to the discounts mentioned above. If that is the case, you will still want to look for ways to group similar customers together.
Thinking this through can be challenging but the payoff is a system that is easier to implement and administer.
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